Those Times and These

by Irvin S. Cobb

All of a sudden, so it seemed, the yard and the street were full of people. Promptly there began to happen most of the things that do happen at a fire. As for instance: Mr. Milus Miles, who arrived among the very first and who had a commandingly loud voice, mounted a rustic bench alongside the croquet ground and called for volunteers to form a bucket brigade. That his recruits would have no buckets to pass after they had enrolled themselves for service was with Mr. Miles a minor consideration. It was the spirit of the thing, the forethought, the responsibility, the aptitude for leadership in a work of succour—all these inspired him.

Mr. Ulysses Rice, who lived in the next street, climbed the side fence—under the circumstances it somehow to him seemed a more resolute thing to scale the fence than to enter by the gate in the regular way—and ran across the yard, inspired with a neighbourly and commendable desire to save something right away. He put his toe in a croquet wicket and fell headlong. This was to be expected of Mr. Rice. He had a perfect genius for getting into accidents. All Nature was ever in a conspiracy with all the inanimate objects in the world to do him bodily hurt. If he went skiff riding and fell overboard, as he customarily did, it was not because he had rocked the boat. The boat rocked itself. He was the only man in town who had ever succeeded in gashing his throat with a safety razor.

He now disentangled his foot from the wicket and scrambled up and, still actuated by the best motives imaginable, he dashed toward the back of the Priest homestead, being minded to seek entrance by a rear door. But a wire clothesline, swinging at exactly the right height to catch him just under the nose, did catch him just under the nose and almost sawed the tip of that useful organ off Mr. Rice's agonised face. Coincidentally, citizens of various ages and assorted sizes ran into the house and dragged out the furnishings of the lower floor, bestowing their salvage right where other citizens might fall over it. Through all the joints between the shingles the roof of the ell leaked smoke, until it resembled a sloped bed of slaking lime. This fire was rapidly getting to be a regular fire.

With a great clattering the department came tearing up the street. Dropping down from their perches on the running boards of the wagons, certain of its members began unreeling the hose, then ran back with it to couple it to the nearest fire hydrant, nearly two blocks away down Clay Street. Others brought a ladder and reared it against the side of the house, with its uppermost rounds projecting above the low eaves. While many hands steadied the ladder in place, Captain Bud Gorman of Station No. 1—there was also a Station No. 2, but Bud skippered Station No. 1—mounted it and, with an axe, started chopping a hole in the roof at a point where there seemed as yet to be no immediate peril. Under his strokes the shingles flew in showers. It was evident that if the flames should spread to this immediate area Captain Bud Gorman would have a rough but practicable flue ready for their egress into the open air, against the moment when they had burst through the ceiling and the rafters below.

More people and yet more kept coming. The rubber piping, which perversely had kinked and twisted as it came off the spinning drum of hose reel No. 1, was fairly straight now, and from his station just inside the gate the fire chief bellowed the command down the line to turn 'er on! They turned her on, but somewhere in the coupled sections of hose a stricture had developed. All that happened was that from the brass snout of the nozzle a languid gush of yellow water arose in a fan shape to an elevation of perhaps fifteen feet, thence descending in a cascade, not upon the particular spot at which the nozzle was aimed, but full upon the ill-starred Mr. Rice as he tugged to uproot a wooden support of the little grape arbor which flanked the house on the endangered side. Somewhat disfigured by the clothesline but still resolute to lend a helping hand somewhere, Mr. Rice had but a moment before become possessed of an ambition to remove the grape vines, trellis and all, to a place of safety. His reward for this kindly attempt was a sudden soaking.

As though the hiss of the water had aroused him, Judge Priest sat up in the grass, where he had been lying during these tumultuous and crowded five minutes. He was still half dazed. As his eyesight cleared, he saw that the bathroom was as good as gone and that his bedroom was about to go. Some one helped him to his unsteady feet and kept him upright. He shook himself free from the supporting grasp of the person who held him, and advanced toward the porch steps, wavering a little on his legs as he went.

Then, before anybody sensed what he meant to do, before anybody could make a move to stop him, he had mounted the steps and was at the front door.

Out of the door, bumping into him, backed a coughing, gasping squad, their noses smarting and their eyes streaming from the acrid reek, towing after them the big horsehair sofa which was the principal piece of furniture in the judge's sitting room. The sofa had lost two of its casters in transit, and it took all their strength to drag it over the lintel.

“It's no use, Judge Priest,” panted one of these workers, recognising him; “we've got pretty nearly everything out that was downstairs and you couldn't get upstairs now if you tried.”

Then seeing that the owner meant to disregard the warning, this man threw out an arm forcibly to detain the other. But for all his age and size, the judge was wieldy enough when he chose to be. With an agile twist of his body he dodged past, and as the man, astounded and horrified, glared across the threshold he saw Judge Priest running down the murky hall and, with head bent and his mouth and nose buried in the crook of one elbow, starting up the stairs into the thickest and blackest of the smoke. To this man's credit, be it said, he made a valiant effort to overtake the old man. The pursuer darted in behind him, but at the foot of the steps fell back, daunted and unable to breathe. He staggered out again into the open, gagging with the smoke that was in his throat and down in his lungs.